THE THUMS
GARDENERS AND BOTANISTS

__ Part VIII __

IN SUBSEQUENCE

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All other trace of the Thums was gradually erased from South Platt. Dr. Thadius Beacon published in 1963 a further note of the garden at South Platt, ‘many years totally neglected and the house belonging to it empty and ruined yet though the garden is quite covered with weeds, there remain among them manifest footsteps of its founder.’ Among the plants surviving from the heyday of the garden were ‘two trees of the Arbutus, the largest I have seen’, which were among the species recorded in the garden by Billius in a list of trees he added to Thum's copy of the Botanica.
Any survivors of these specimens disappeared in the mid-century developments which saw the demolition of the Thums' house. Today no plant specimens survive which can be linked directly with the Thums.
During the following decade, the church of St. Eustace at South Platt was declared redundant. The churchyard became a wilderness, and the building itself having been boarded up is currently scheduled for demolition.